The Madman’s Narrative

intermediate3 min readstatistics · philosophy · psychology

Many coherent interpretations can fit the same events. Taleb argues that a convincing story is not enough to establish which explanation is true; competing accounts need evidence and testable implications.

THE IDEA

The Madman’s Narrative

We have far too many possible ways to interpret past events for our own good.

Consider the behavior of paranoid people. I have had the privilege to work with colleagues who have hidden paranoid disorders that come to the surface on occasion. When the person is highly intelligent, he can astonish you with the most far-fetched, yet completely plausible interpretations of the most innocuous remark. If I say to them, “I am afraid that …,” in reference to an undesirable state of the world, they may interpret it literally, that I am experiencing actual fright, and it triggers an episode of fear on the part of the paranoid person. Someone hit with such a disorder can muster the most insignificant of details and construct an elaborate and coherent theory of why there is a conspiracy against him. And if you gather, say, ten paranoid people, all in the same state of episodic delusion, the ten of them will provide ten distinct, yet coherent, interpretations of events.

When I was about seven, my schoolteacher showed us a painting of an assembly of impecunious Frenchmen in the Middle Ages at a banquet held by one of their benefactors, some benevolent king, as I recall. They were holding the soup bowls to their lips. The schoolteacher asked me why they had their noses in the bowls and I answered, “Because they were not taught manners.” She replied, “Wrong. The reason is that they are hungry.” I felt stupid at not having thought of this, but I could not understand what made one explanation more likely than the other, or why we weren’t both wrong (there was no, or little, silverware at the time, which seems the most likely explanation).

Beyond our perceptional distortions, there is a problem with logic itself. How can someone have no clue yet be able to hold a set of perfectly sound and coherent viewpoints that match the observations and abide by every single possible rule of logic? Consider that two people can hold incompatible beliefs based on the exact same data. Does this mean that there are possible families of explanations and that each of these can be equally perfect and sound? Certainly not. One may have a million ways to explain things, but the true explanation is unique, whether or not it is within our reach.

In a famous argument, the logician W. V. Quine showed that there exist families of logically consistent interpretations and theories that can match a given series of facts. Such insight should warn us that mere absence of nonsense may not be sufficient to make something true.

Quine’s problem is related to his finding difficulty in translating statements between languages, simply because one could interpret any sentence in an infinity of ways. (Note here that someone splitting hairs could find a self-canceling aspect to Quine’s own writing. I wonder how he expects us to understand this very point in a noninfinity of ways).

This does not mean that we cannot talk about causes; there are ways to escape the narrative fallacy. How? By making conjectures and running experiments, or as we will see in Part Two (alas), by making testable predictions. The psychology experiments I am discussing here do so: they select a population and run a test. The results should hold in Tennessee, in China, even in France.

When to use it

When analyzing historical events, be aware that multiple narratives can fit the same set of facts, and seek out disconfirming evidence.
In business post-mortems, avoid creating a single story for why a project failed; instead, generate and test multiple hypotheses.
In personal relationships, be cautious about interpreting innocent remarks as evidence of hidden motives; consider alternative explanations.
When evaluating psychological or social science research, remember that logical consistency alone does not guarantee truth; experimental testing is essential.

FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE

In practice

Paranoid Interpretation

A person with paranoid disorder interprets an innocuous remark like 'I am afraid that...' as a literal expression of fear, triggering an episode. They can use tiny details to construct a coherent conspiracy theory. Different paranoid individuals will produce different but equally coherent interpretations.

Medieval Banquet

Taleb recalls a teacher asking why medieval Frenchmen in a painting held soup bowls to their lips. He suggested poor manners; she suggested hunger. He later proposed a lack of silverware, using the competing accounts to question how either original answer had been established.

✳

A MOMENT TO REFLECT

Put it to work.

How can you test your interpretations of past events to avoid the narrative fallacy?
Recall a time when you constructed a coherent story to explain a situation, only to later realize it was false. What alternative explanations could you have considered?
What steps can you take to consider multiple plausible narratives before settling on one?